


Ashes and Oblivion

by Shadow_Belle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Asphyxiation, Character Death, Dark, DeathEater!Draco, Dirty Talk, Explicit Sex, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, breath play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:03:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Belle/pseuds/Shadow_Belle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Bambu Celebrate the Season</p><p>"It took a long time for young flesh and green bone to burn; longer than one might expect from the offhand depictions in fiction. The man she’d professed to love, his body was still alight and smoldering beneath the arch of the unforgiving sky, and Hermione knew he would not find the release of ashes for many hours yet, and even so, her body burned with its own cursed fire for this marked traitor that held her."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes and Oblivion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bambu](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Bambu).



A young woman stood alone before a blazing funeral pyre. Her hair whipped cruelly about her face in the bitter wind, her mouth filling with the acrid smoke. And she wondered if this was what death tasted like.

Because she’d seen it, touched it, even held it to her breast. It was eating its way inside of her now, so why not let it pass across her tongue like an absinthe kiss?

She turned her face to sky, looking for some gold through the grey. And for the first time, there was none. It was a vast expanse that swallowed all it touched, like an ink bottle that had spilled across creation, the ink slowly swirling into the other colors until they were all grey too.

The only color that seemed to hold against the grey was the red. It was still so bright, so vibrant. Slashes of crimson against everything. The ground. Her hands. Yes, her hands were drenched, sticky and bright- surreal against the rest of the world. And no matter how she scrubbed, it just wouldn’t come off. Because she could scrub the skin off, the offending red, but there was only more red beneath, her red.

Vindictive daggers of sleet began to pelt her exposed skin and Hermione took one last look at the pyre. She prayed that it would burn forever.

It would have been easier if the sky had opened up in a rage, and it had been tears from an angry black heaven that had doused the flames, but it wasn’t to be. There was only more grey- a quiet neutrality that was oblivious to the travails of man or beast.

The war was grey too.

It had started as a crimson slash, a banner for all that was right and good. But the crimson was all gone now, the last of it slipping away with the body on the pyre. How was she to tell Ginny that Ron was dead, that the last of her family was gone?

There weren’t any more tears. She would have saved some if she’d known how horrible this war would be, how many would die. They’d all been so naïve, so eager to answer the call to arms, to fight for what they knew to be right and good in their young hearts. And for ten years, a river of blood had cut through the wizarding world, sharper than any rhetoric.

Hermione sank to the ground, wishing again that she could cry. She’d loved him. When the war was over they were going to get married. They were going to have babies. They were going to live. And now it was all grey ash.

The sleet continued to fall, sticking to her cloak, melting into her hair. Maybe this pitiful frozen offering was a gift, maybe it was supposed to be a pale substitute for those tears that she couldn’t cry.

She wanted to scream, to tear at her hair, but all she could do was sit there, freezing on the damp ground. But she couldn’t leave. Not until the flames had consumed him. He’d made her promise that if he died, that she would do this for him.

It was funny how he’d given up here, in this spot. They’d almost made it back to Hogwarts. She could see the remains of the castle from the clearing. Oh, and he’d been so strong, so tough. She was sure somehow that they were going to make it. But the poison that had been on the tip of that sword had been so much stronger. He’d walked for miles with that venom running through his blood, the hallucinations…

But here he’d fallen. Never to get up.

And here was where the last of her dreams had died.

The fire was more smoke than flame now, but she didn’t dare enhance it with her wand. They would find her.

She turned her eyes back up to the castle that had once offered her succor. Perhaps it would again. Or maybe she would die here too. It didn’t matter, she realized, because she had promised.

Hermione aimed her wand and brought the fire to a hearty blaze, the flames shooting up into the sky, the pyre becoming a beacon to any who would look for her.

She was almost glad that Gryffindor Tower was gone. Hermione didn’t know if she could stand to be there with the memories of all of those that she’d seen fall, or even those reminders of innocent days long past.

None had thought to renew the protection charms after Dumbledore had died and his magic had died with him. So they had been easy prey for the Death Eaters and half of the castle had been burned to the ground. The only safe place now was probably the Dungeons, though even the Slytherins had been forced to leave their belongings and flee with that first battle. It was house against house then, no one trusted anyone and they’d been attacked just as if they were the intruders and not classmates.

Hermione found one of the secret passages and crept inside.

The smell was familiar. It smelled of books and ink, though a damp mustiness pervaded everything. A scent that had once comforted her, but now, it made her so sad. Books had no place in her life now.

She slipped through the passages, hoping that she remembered the right way to go and not that Hermione expected to find anyone creeping around the tired skeleton of the castle, but she’d learned to never drop her guard.

There was a door to her right and she pushed through it.

It wasn’t a room that she’d ever been in before, but she hadn’t spent loads of time traipsing around the Dungeons either. That was strictly Slytherin territory, nothing that she’d wanted to be familiar with.

It was a library.

Hermione sighed like the weight of the world had just fallen off of her shoulders. Somehow, she felt safe here, protected by the well-worn spines and dog-eared pages. She sank back against the wall and against her will, her eyes closed. She slept, with nothing but that false sense of security to keep out the cold.

A sound startled her out of her hard won sleep and she jerked to attention, her eyes scanning the room like the seasoned warrior that she’d become. She reached for her wand, but found it was gone.

“Looking for this?” A hooded figure stepped from behind the shelves holding her wand aloft.

“I can fight you without it.” Hermione said coolly.

“Can you? Wandless magic then?” He asked her, his derision evident.

“Yes.” She sounded much more confident than she felt. She could do wandless magic. Hermione was the first to learn everything, even how to cast an Unforgivable sans wand. The energy it would take would damn near kill her too, but it didn’t matter. She would do what she had to do.

“Still the first in your class. The best at everything. Even death.”

“Who are you, what do you want from me?”

“I want nothing from you but your departure.”

And suddenly, her wand was by her side and the hooded figure was gone.

She pulled herself up and walked through the stacks. The books were so beautiful. They were something that she’d almost given up on. Text after text lined the walls, and she thought maybe her mystery guest had had the right idea, to spend this bloodbath here in the solitude of learned things. After all, what had this war brought her but death?

Hermione couldn’t believe the cowardice of the thoughts that she was having. She couldn’t have really sent Harry out to die by himself. In any dimension, in any realm of possibility, she’d always go with him. No matter the cost.

Though a hefty cost it had been, paid with her blood and the blood of those she loved.

But she realized that she would pay it again. It was what had to be done.

It was right. Even though, she was so very tired of right. Tired of good. Tired of being so goddamn valiant that all she could do was lose. There were darker magics to be had, things that would make the Dark Lord quail at their might. Things that she knew because of her infernal curiosity. Perhaps she was already on the road to Hell. Because she knew these things, had the knowledge to save those she loved. And she hadn’t used it, because she’d been afraid. Afraid of what it would make her. She should have been able to rely on her stoutness of character, the purity of her intent…

But she couldn’t. Her thirst for knowledge was just as blinding as the quest for power.

Now here she was, in a secret Slytherin library ready to spend the rest of the war hiding within these forbidden stacks.

Her fingers brushed absently against the spine of a nearby book, a feeling that had once been so familiar, but now so foreign. She’d thought she’d been willing to sacrifice it all, but here were these books, a throwback to that time before, that time when there was no grey and even the black and white had been rose tinted. And suddenly, she couldn’t leave them.

Maybe there would be more tears now. Maybe she could dig deep into the dry well of her soul and find some to spare, selfish though they would be.

It was then that an animalistic sound tore itself from her throat, and dry shudders wracked her body, but still no tears would fall. She could wail out her anguish to the heavens, howl at the injustice of it all, but still no cleansing drops to carry the sorrow down her cheeks.

She sank to the floor again, an unknown book clutched to her chest, clutched as if she were to ever to let go, that maybe her heart would stop. It had suddenly become all that was lost, that musty text. And if she held it tight enough, that would be enough to save everything, even though she knew that it was too late, knew that the world she’d stood for was gone.

There were arms around her now and Hermione did not fight them.

“I can’t cry.” She whispered brokenly.

“I know.”

She rocked with her pain, unable to sit still, unable to cry, unable to scream. All she could do was break, a withered husk filled with dust and ash.

Grey. Grey. Grey.

But those arms were so strong and the comfort that they offered her so real. But she saw something that made her pause, there was a sudden antidote for her pain. The sleeves of the cloak had slid back and there, on the arm of her savior, was the Dark Mark.

“You could do it now. I told you I would fight…but I won’t.”

“I know that too.” He continued to hold her.

“Please,” she whispered. “Make it stop.”

“I can’t.”

Long, lean fingers slid up and down her arms now, pulling her tighter against the solid wall of his chest.

It felt so good to feel his heat, to feel his strength. To not be the strong one. And to be alive. But she didn’t deserve it, she wasn’t good enough to feel this rush of exhilaration through her blood, not when so many who were so much more worthy had gone before. They were all grey ash too. But not her. Her heart still beat, her limbs still moved, and she still yearned.

“This is all I can give you. Right here. Right now.”

It took a long time for young flesh and green bone to burn; longer than one might expect from the offhand depictions in fiction. The man she’d professed to love, his body was still alight and smoldering beneath the arch of the unforgiving sky, and Hermione knew he would not find the release of ashes for many hours yet, and even so, her body burned with its own cursed fire for this marked traitor that held her.

Damn her to Hell.

Perhaps this would be murder after all because she was goddamned for letting him touch her. For wanting him to touch her. For grasping at this bit of life that was offered her. She didn’t even know who he was.

Just a man.

A Death Eater.

But a man nonetheless.

A stranger in the midst of a war…

She angled back against his shoulder, turning her face up and closing her eyes, offering him whatever he would have of her and absolving herself of sin by not looking into the hood of that cloak. By not seeing his face.

“I’ll give you what you want. But you’ll look at me.”

Her eyes fluttered open almost unwillingly, and the first thing she saw was more grey. But grey like the sky before a storm, endlessly deep arctic pools, a frigidity that she could drown in. She reached up with a tentative hand and slid the hood of the cloak back, letting it fall as if its revelation meant nothing.

But it meant everything.

She jerked her hand back as if she’d been bitten, but she didn’t pull away. She knew she should, couldn’t understand why he’d even want her there, touching him. But his arms were still around her, Draco Malfoy still held her.

And he could have been the God of Thunder in all of his glory, his hair a long mane of platinum hanging free about his shoulders, giving him a wildness she’d never expected. His body looked as if he’d been in truth wielding Thor’s Hammer, with broad shoulders, well defined muscle and the calluses on his hands.

His face, it couldn’t have been more striking. Because it wasn’t perfect. A jagged scar ran from his hairline over his left eye and down his cheek. The mark of battle, the wages of war. There was something about it, something achingly beautiful- a dark art of stoic suffering.

“I’m not as pretty as you remember.” he said without rancor.

Her fingers sought his face now, slowly, as if only that would prevent him from denying her. They slid across his cheek and along the hard set of his jaw.

“Give me new memories.” Then she scowled, remembering other things as well. “That is, if you can stand the touch of a mudblood.”

“It’s all red, Hermione. When my father was slit belly to throat, it was red. Not blue. And when I soaked the ground at Hogsmeade with blood from the bodies of blood traitors, it was all red there too.”

Those hands that were stained with the blood of her friends, they slid across her flesh, under her robes and she arched into them, tilting her face to his yet again. This time, his mouth descended on hers, hard and unforgiving.

But she didn’t want forgiveness. She wanted the heat to consume her, to incinerate her so that there was nothing left, so that she could be a part of all that grey ash. The crimson wouldn’t hurt anymore, wouldn’t seep out like a purulent infection, all the while letting her walk around as if her insides hadn’t rotted.

He tasted like honey, but smelled like pine and sandalwood, his scent wrapped around her, filled her. And she wanted more, tangling her hands in the length of his hair, she crushed her mouth back into his, her softness bruising under the force.

But he had no talent for tenderness either. Her robes slid from her in one elegant motion, but his grip was firm, his body held none of the boyish softness that maybe it once had and his breath was harsh against her ear as he hauled her around, turning her so she straddled him.

She pulled at his cloak frantically, wondering if she paused for a second, if this would only be a dream. But he felt so real beneath her questing fingers, his hands so hot on her skin, spreading heat where once there had been nothing but frozen wasteland.

His cloak discarded, he pulled her closer, his fingers marking half-moons into the soft part of her thighs and she reached down between them, finding the waistband of his pants, she tried to push them off as well and he shifted to help her.

And suddenly, the reality of what they were doing hit her.

Draco Malfoy was almost inside of her.

His cock was thick and hard against her, demanding entrance, and she wondered briefly, if she should stop. There would be no turning back once that length of hard flesh was ramming into her most intimate of places, no turning back after he made her come, no changing the fact that she had rutted like a whore with a man she cared nothing for while the man that she did love burned to his eternity.

Had loved.

“What are you waiting for, Granger?”

He settled her even closer now, the head of his member pushing past the demure barrier of her nether lips and finding the slickness there though he waited to claim her completely.

She gasped, her breath hitching in her chest. “Oh.”

“This is what you want,” he said quietly.

And it was in that moment that Hermione knew that truly, he was lost to all that he had been before. Once he would have smirked, confident in the debt the world owed him, confident that he had all of the answers, surrounded by the might of Malfoy. He still held that surety of himself, but it was deeper somehow. And now, the one thing that she had been sure of, that trademarked smirk, it was gone. For all that she’d sworn to one day wipe it from his smug face, the war had done it for her, leaving her with an odd emptiness.

Suddenly, it was one thing she wanted to see.

She knew that Draco. She could hate that Draco.

His hands came to rest on her hips and guided her forward. “You want me to take away your culpability.”

He eased her back, withdrawing ever so slightly.

“Yes.” She whispered, bereft at the loss.

“So you can pretend that I took advantage of you. That you didn’t fuck to feel something, anything, while everything else died around you.”

“Yes.” The admission was torn from her.

“Is this your Death Eater fantasy? Do you need it to hurt so you know you’re alive?”

And she surprised herself, her voice stronger now. “Yes.

She closed her eyes, then drove forward impaling herself on his cock and she cried out, almost unable to stand the sensation. Her hands came to rest on his shoulders and she rocked slightly, but it was agony.

He grabbed her around the back of her neck, pulling her face down to his. She opened her eyes, somehow knowing that’s what he was waiting for.

But she didn’t see what she thought would be waiting for her. Hermione thought she would see a rage, a darkness…but it was only more heat.

Only heat. Only the flame that seared her being, that made her body want things that she’d almost forgotten. Made her want to scream and pull at her hair, made her want to rake her nails across his skin, anything to make him tear at the inside of her.

She didn’t even realize until he moved that he still hadn’t filled her as completely as he was able. His gaze held hers as he finished easing the rest of his length into the core of her.

Hermione felt like she was being ripped in half, but it was an exquisite pain- sharp and terrible, sweetly fractured.

Draco eased her down on her back now, their bodies still joined. She was almost afraid to link her legs around his waist, but she did. And with his first thrust, her back scraped on the cold, rough stone of the floor.

“I’m taking you like a whore,” he whispered. “You’re not even fucking me because you want it. You’re doing it to fill some well that’s run dry.”

Her voice was unsteady. “Call me what you want, I’ll be what you want. Just fuck me.”

She knew she sounded so weak, but it had gone too far now.

“Oh, I’ll fuck you.” He punctuated his words with another deep thrust. “But tell me what’s so empty.”

She gasped and arched up to him. “Everything.”

Draco snaked his hand between them, that cruel device that had once been a tool for death was now bringing her divine pleasure as he expertly manipulated her swollen flesh.

Hermione could feel the intensity building inside of her, but she didn’t want it, not yet. It was too soon. She was crimson now, and after this was over, she would be grey again. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and her grip had gone from his shoulders to his wrist, her nails digging into him as she fought the sensation.

And then it exploded, sending molten bliss throughout her body in a fiery rush.

But he didn’t stop. As the waves of starry liberation took her, he continued to drive himself into her. She was screaming and the pressure was building again even before it crashed.

His other hand was around her throat now, his thumb pressing against her larynx and the hand that had been her deliverance was over her mouth, she could almost taste herself on him.

“Do you want to die?” He demanded through gritted teeth.

No more grey.

She nodded her head.

That hand around her throat tightened, the edges of her vision going black even as another orgasm clawed at her spasming body.

It was then that she felt something hot burning down her cheeks. She was crying. Her vision was only a pinpoint of light now and all she could feel was that endless radiating pleasure from between her thighs.

And she realized that she didn’t want to die.

Not just to avoid death, to avoid the end of all things, but she wanted to really live. Even if it was only in shades of grey. She wasn’t ready to give up.

Hermione fought the hand around her neck, and for a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to let go.

But he did and his mouth claimed hers as he allowed his pureblooded seed to spill inside of her.

Hermione lay in his arms, her hair in damp tendrils on her forehead and cheeks. She was safe. And she’d never felt more alive. She fell asleep wrapped in the cocoon that he’d offered her against the world and in the morning, though alone, she emerged the butterfly.


End file.
